Deborah Coddington's Liberty Belle

Some of these lunacy sightings are turning into horror stories. I've written to Trevor Mallard about this one:

"My stepdaughter went to Weltech in the last couple of weeks to enrol in a course of some interest to her. In order to get all the necessaries for her course she had to apply for a student loan. While filling out the applications etc she had an electoral enrolment form placed in front of her and was told that she had to fill it in. She replied, 'I am only 16 and can't vote yet'. She was told that she must fill it in anyway and being the good obedient little 16yo (if there is such a thing), she did.

Fast forward to today and she has received a letter from the Registrar of Electors saying they understand she is now 16 years old, when she turns 17 (in 6 weeks) she will be sent another application form to complete (is the use-by date of government forms less than 6 weeks? - should the Greens be informed of this wastage?) so she can then provisionally enrol to vote and when she turns 18 she will be placed on the electoral roll.

When she said 'I am only 16 and can't vote yet' why didn't someone say 'hey good point sweetie, you don't need to fill in this form yet' and let her wait until she was old enough to register for voting?

What's the point of this, and what happens to this information?

Here's another bit of nonsense. The Plumbers, Gasfitters and Drainlayers Board, under the direction of the Health Minister, is trying to introduce competence based licensing for plumbers and drainlayers. They'll have to do about 20 hours training each year to be able to relicense. The courses need to be cleared by the PG & D Board - for a fee. So the plumber who wrote to me, who has a small business of 5 people, says he'll pay an extra $10,000 in training fees each year. An extra 100 hours of time will be taken out of the working year, placing yet more shortages on the industry. Multiply 20 hours by say 9000 plumbers in NZ and you get about 22,500 working days. That's a lot of plumbing we'll miss out on; more compliance costs to strangle small business; and higher prices consumers will pay when the dunny's blocked. Better go back to the long-drop. (Merde - zat is verboten under the RMA).

Yours in liberty
Deborah Coddington